


be here now

by exquisitelymorose



Category: The Flight Attendant (TV)
Genre: Establishedish Relationship, F/F, Feelings, Soft Miranda, sexy talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:34:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28459095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exquisitelymorose/pseuds/exquisitelymorose
Summary: "It’s not as hard as one might think to catch Miranda off guard. As a woman with feelings, feelings that are big and vast and as much a part of her as they are of me, it’s easy to stun her into silence. She knows what to do with guns. She rarely knows what to do with emotions."
Relationships: Miranda Croft/Narrator
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38





	be here now

**Author's Note:**

> Like all good lesbians, I have become enamoured with Miranda Croft. I see a softness and near goofiness in her character that hasn't been explored in any fic. I wanted to see her more soft, less daddy. In my mind the narrator is someone she's met outside of work but who knows, to some extent, what she does. You can let your mind wander on the backstory. Let me know your thoughts and how you feel about this characterization. Thank you, loves and Happy New Year!

“I’ll be quick” she says and I hate that far away look in her eyes. 

It’s impossible to ever just be with Miranda. It’s always you, her, the job and the fortress she’s built around herself. Always a person who wants you there but only _there_ , no further, no closer. 

I open my mouth to tell her I’ll be fine, just down the street at the wine bar we’d agreed on but she’s already turning toward the door. Some dark, dusty looking place that probably only serves the finest, most expensive of whiskeys. It’s a meeting, she’s told me, but more of a “trade off,” whatever that means. I learned long ago it’s rarely worth asking.

The air is brisk against my bare legs, long coat whipping in the wind against my shins as I make my way toward the well lit bar. Miranda and I have been doing this for nearing fifteen years. My phone will ring, an unknown number, and that voice will be on the other end, “still able to see me?” A few times the answers been no. A three year stretch when I met someone I thought I might marry. Another odd year I just couldn’t bare to see her. 

It happens every few months, or every few years. She managed to see me eight times one year. Then not at all for almost four. No rhyme or reason, she’d say. Not for lack of wanting. “I think of you always,” she admitted late one night.

I never get to decide. No phone number to call, no e-mail. Just the occasional post office I can send mail or letters to. Things that are often returned to me or never picked up. 

“I wrote you a letter,” I told her last year, “sent it to the address you gave me. It came right back.”

She looked at me evenly, “I had to leave.”

“I wrote things I’ve never been able to say to you.”

She’d looked hurt then. About what, I’m not sure. That I couldn’t say them to her? That she’d never get the letter? 

Her eyes had set on me hard as she circled me slowly, a hand cupping my hip and smoothing across to the other as her hips met my backside gently, lips softly pressing into the spot between my shoulder and neck that Miranda had claimed as her own. “Tell me,” she said, “tell me what you wrote.”

“I can’t. It’s why I had to write it, Miranda.”

“Then show me.”

And with lips, tongue and fingers, I tried. 

I have a sneaking suspicion I’m Mirandas longest relationship, if you can call it that. I think I may be the only person willing to be dragged through the rubble of her life like this.

The bar is lit in warm tones, the music is low and the patrons are well dressed. These are always the places she chooses. Easier, with Mirandas penchant for designer clothes, to blend in with aged, high society folk. For me, it’s fine. I settle in at a small red velvet booth where we’ll have some semblance of privacy and order a gin and tonic. It comes a few moments later. 

And a few after that, a thin champagne flute, “from the gentleman at the bar,” the server tells me and I glance to a suited man at the bar. He lifts two fingers and gives me a small, polite nod before turning back to his own drink. Generous, I think, a man who buys without expectation. A rarity. 

Ten minutes turns into twenty, my belly is warmed, my cheeks are flushing. “Quick” can mean so many things to Miranda and like always with her, I feel lonely. Waiting, forever. 

The man is still at the bar.

The server comes and I request a top up of whatever he’s drinking, on me. A few moments later a throat clears next to me.

“Thank you,” says the suited, handsome man, “I appreciate this.”

He’s holding his drink in one hand, the other hand is shoved into his pocket.

“May I?” He points to the empty seat across from me. I know I should say no. But then why did I send him the drink? I nod.

He settles in smoothly. The conversation is fine, just fine and the company breaks the dullness of waiting. I tell him I’m waiting for my partner and he only smiles, a genuine smile. Maybe he was just lonely too. 

“Well, hello there.”

Her voice is distinguishable, clear and affecting above the din of the crowd. She’s pulling off her black leather gloves, shoving them into her coat. Her eyebrow is raised and her smirk is anything but welcoming. 

“Miranda,” I say, “this is James.”

She fixes me with a stare without glancing at him, “and will James be joining us?”

He clears his throat, breaks the spell between us and speaks, “I was on my way, actually. Your wife was just saying how much she was looking forward to your evening together,” he says as he shuffles out of the booth and stands. 

James gives me a nod and I give him a smile as my shoulders set, tense and ready for Mirandas withering stare. 

Her hands fold neatly on top of the table as she settles in, “wife?”

"I didn’t say that. I said partner,” I sip from my glass, “he inferred.”

“Partner?”

I sigh. I’m tired of these conversations.

“Occasional cross continental lover? What would you like me to call you to a stranger, Miranda?”

Suddenly the server is there and Miranda is ordering for both of us. 

“How was the meeting?” I ask when we’re alone again.

“How was James?”

“Oh, get off it.”

“I left you for thirty minutes, Elisabeth."

My scoff comes hard, heavy, full of resentment and bitterness.

“Thirty minutes in the what, four days I have with you? Before you leave again for three months, maybe three years?”

She’s rolling her eyes, scoffing at me now too, “I’m not-”

“Not what? Having this conversation again? Then I’m not having a conversation about James.”

The drinks are settled in front of us as silence settles over us. Somewhere around the eight year mark Miranda lost the ability to be cruel with me. It seeped from her almost completely. Left in it’s place was stony silence, a vacant look behind her eyes. 

“Do you remember after Lydia?” I ask, “when I ended the engagement and you swooped in all knight in shining fucking armour? And I told you to leave because you were breaking my heart?” She doesn’t say anything but she doesn’t have to, it’s in her eyes whether she tries to shield it or not, “It’s happening again.”

I’m surprised she doesn’t immediately act annoyed or try to laugh it off, all ego and bravado. She’d stopped being able to be cruel but the ire, the charming, maddening, erotic ire, that never left. 

“Then I’ll go.”

“Fucking Christ, Miranda, that’s not what I’m saying.”

She finally sighs then, long and hard, “well fuck, what _are_ you trying to say then?”

“You make me feel lonely.” I’m surprised to feel my eyes might water. 

She looks stunned, maybe not because she doesn’t know that but because she’s unsure what to do with it. It’s not as hard as one might think to catch Miranda off guard. As a woman with feelings, feelings that are big and vast and as much a part of her as they are of me, it’s easy to stun her into silence. She knows what to do with guns. She rarely knows what to do with emotions. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. And I know that’s real. She’s apologized to me only enough to count on one hand. They’d all been as real as anything. 

“Yeah, so am I.”

“What can I do?” She nearly whispers. 

“Be with me now. And actually _be_ with me. Stop looking over your shoulder, stop taking calls. Stop deflecting and trying to interrogate me over a harmless conversation with a stranger.”

“Hey, he-”

“He nothing. I’ve watched you break someones wrist for touching me and I said nothing because they deserved it. But James and I were only chatting.”

She does roll her eyes then and I feel my woman, the one I wake to think about, is back, “Fine,” she says.

“What about the rest?”

“I-” she struggles and nearly stutters, “I’ll try. If the phone rings you know I have to pick up.”

“Just try.”

She nods. 

No calls come in that night. She focuses her eyes on me and keeps them there, becoming darker, consuming. After a third whiskey she settles into the booth next to me and settles her hand above my knee, possessive and strong.

Her hair falls over my shoulder as she leans in, lips capturing my earlobe for just a moment before she whispers, “it makes me fucking insane to think of anyone else looking at you.”

“You know they do,” I tease and she digs her nails into skin of my thigh.

“Who do you look at?”

“You.”

Her hand smooths itself up my thigh, just under the tan leather skirt.

“And who do you think about?”

“You.”

“When?”

She’s nuzzling into my neck, tracing a pattern into my skin with her thumb and the room is growing hazy. I reach for her then, capture her chin between my thumb and stroke under her jaw, matching her gaze, “when I fuck myself,” I say loud enough for her and anyone passing to her. “I think of you when I fuck myself.” 

Miranda is paying the tab mere minutes later and then we’re in the foyer of my apartment, my back against the wall, her fingers brushing between my legs.

“I missed you,” I whisper into the skin of her neck and she catches my mouth with hers.

She hands me a glass of wine in bed where she’s left me to catch my breath. My limbs limp and satiated. I take a sip and place it on the nightstand before opening my arms. 

Miranda never makes eye contact when she allows me to hold her and I accepted that long ago. She simply settles in and rests her head over my heart.

“I bloody missed you too, you know,” she says after a long moment.

I rub circles over her bare back, “aren't you lonely too?” 

“Can I be honest?” She asks into the skin of my chest after a moment.

“Always.”

“Mostly, I’m so fucking exhausted I can’t feel or think. It’ll be weeks, sometimes months where I barely breathe at all. But when I do, yes. That’s when I call you. Always, when I feel it, I call you.”

“I wish it were more often.”

“I wish it could be.” She pushes herself up then and looks at me, “but even when I’m exhausted, when shit is absolutely fucking wrecked and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, you’re always there. Somewhere in me.”

I kiss her, hard and long.

“Keep trying? To be with me more often. Whatever that means, just keep trying?”

“I will.”

“I don’t want you to keep breaking my heart.”

“I know, baby,” she says and I feel her words everywhere. 

Miranda settles back into the side of my body, curling in on me, her head once again resting near my chest, “besides,” she says, “I’m becoming fucking ancient and when I finally have to get out of the game, someone’ll have to take care of me. Might as well be you.”


End file.
